


Bend Me, Break Me... But Put Me Back Together Again

by teicakes



Series: That Fucky Mer AU [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cervical Penetration, Ch.3 is full up non-con with sendak, Confessions, Consentacles, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Eggpreg, Enthusiastic Consent, Erotic Electrostimulation, Fuck Or Die, Hurt/Comfort, Light Bondage, M/M, Needles, Omega Keith (Voltron), Oral Sex, Other, Oviposition, PROBLEMATIC STUFF INCOMING READ NOTES, Post Mpreg, Tentacles, Whump, future dub/non-con, idk if that counts as unbirth, mermaid au, octopus kolivan, revoked consent, seahorse keith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-04-24 10:13:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14353371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teicakes/pseuds/teicakes
Summary: Keith's gotten over his initial worries about breeding: he's got a ton of cute kids, an attentive mate... but it seems like Kolivan's interests are elsewhere right now. But that's fine, Keith can deal with these pent up frustrations elsewhere, right? A valuable mate like him can't end up with more that he can handle, at least, he's pretty sure...Things can't get worse, at least, he doesn't think so.





	1. Chapter 1

Everything goes by so fast in the next two weeks Keith could hardly keep track of everything. The first day he simply slept, either in Kolivan’s arms or later in a hammock’s cocoon of a tattered sail, recovering from everything his body had gone through. He didn’t hurt per say, there was no pain, but the dull ache of muscles worked long and hard coursed through every fibre of his being. He dozed easily, only roused by Kolivan’s arms gently shaking him awake to make him eat.  
  
The next morning he’d woken to several of their children huddled up against his body, little arms curled under themselves or entwined with one of their siblings, heads pressed up against his chest.  
“They miss your heartbeat it seems.” Kolivan smiled at him from where he sat, several more of them exploring his legs and launching themselves from his shoulders to practice swimming. He chuckled, carefully stretching his arms, and watched as the lilac one with red ear fins floundered to grab it’s father and recover from the pinwheel loop it had be caught in.  
  
“They’re graceful,” Keith chuckled as another moved opposite to where it’s little eyes were fixed, widening with each stroke in growing frustration. He couldn’t help but notice the smaller dark haired one perched right against Kolivan’s neck, oddly content to stay still compared to the others.  
  
“They’ll learn in time. It’s not common for my kind to swim for several days after hatching. Until then they’ll grapple around on their surroundings.” As if to illustrate, he lifted his elbow, revealing two hatchlings making their way up his arm.  
  
Keith sat up, bumping a few of the ones pressed against him awake. “So… they’ll be around for a little while longer?” he asked, trying to keep his voice calm.  
  
“A week or two, yes. Will that be a problem?”  
  
Keith opened and closed his mouth a few times, trying to calm the two babes who were now giving him the darkest stink eye he’d ever seen on something barely bigger than his hand. “Not exactly…” he mulled, “but still… I’m not a female… I don’t exactly _know_ how to deal with all of this. Or if I can.”  
  
Even if the gender divides in the ocean were muddy at best and fluid at worst, it was common consensus that the individuals who raised the young until they were fit to survive on their own were female. Whether they carried them until they were born like most or simply took over afterwards as was the way with his kind, they were the ones equipped to do so. They had the temperaments, the soothing hormones, the instincts to do what was needed to help them grow. He was just the one that looked after all the stuff before that part.  
  
“You remember neither am I, and yet they’re all healthy and nothing has happened to them.”  
  
“Yeah, but—”  
  
“But what?” Kolivan carefully moved forward, limbs burdened with active tots held high to avoid sweeping them underfoot. He dropped several of them onto Keith’s lap, leaving him under a blanket of the little octopi now exploring him as actively as they had Kolivan. “You’ve done splendidly until now. Who’s to say you won’t with this?”  
  
Now, two weeks later later, it was hard to say Kolivan had been wrong, or at least, completely wrong. He still isn’t all that skilled at corralling the biggest troublemakers before they could endanger the more delicate pieces in Kolivan’s collections, but he doesn’t mind the feeling of little arms hugging onto him as he moves, or waking up to a pile of them curled up against his chest. There’s something about the weight of their bodies on him that’s strangely soothing. It brings him back to the feeling of carrying them, that extra warmth coming from small lives more than enough to help him drift off at night. Even the times he and Kolivan take them out into the surrounding kelp forest to explore it leaves him feeling strangely good, something he thought he’d never feel at the start of all this. Interspecies breedings weren’t uncommon for most, but for him the idea had always been fraught with worst case scenarios, of abandonment and forced mothership.  
  
Keith smiles to himself as he watches Kolivan try and extract one young one from his waist for the third time this afternoon. She was almost a spitting image of Keith himself, minus the white hair and set of eight legs. They’d taken to calling her Leva, though neither of them had given much more thought into naming the entire brood. Many, Keith included, picked their own names when old enough to do so. Names given by parents were just that, nicknames used by families and families alone.  
  
There’s a tugging at Keith’s wrist and he finds two of their children staring up at him with wide golden eyes and one covering and uncovering their face until he gets the message. Hide and Seek. So many of them love the game, and as soon as he chuckles and tells them he’ll count to thirty a good dozen have perked up at it’s mention and begin squabbling to find hiding spots.  
  
“I’m counting now, you’d all better be out of sight when I’m done!” he laughs, and quickly covers his eyes to the sounds of little voices drifting away. He waits until he can no longer hear them, probably longer than the time he said he’d give them, but he can’t help but give them all the time they need. Hiding is important to learn for all of their kind, irregardless of species. Best to train them slowly.  
  
He finds the first two almost too easily, latched onto huge ropes of kelp with their little arms fanned wide to look like anemone flowers on the vine. He grabs them with a shriek of delight from each, gently chiding them to remember where anemones actually grow. It’s not a bad trick, but there’s the right place for it. They latch onto his shoulders as he continues to swim around searching for the rest.  
  
Another is hiding in a small rocky outcrop, almost completely out of sight save for one forgotten tentacle that he tweaks to let them know they’ve been found out. The next two have buried themselves in the sand to varying degrees of success, with one of them forgetting the crown of their head, ear-fins poking out like little signal flags. It takes him longer to find the others, some of them balling themselves up to hide in the crags of reefs or holding a disgruntled flounder over themselves. Soon enough the count hanging onto him climbs to ten, weighing him down as he continues to hunt for the rest.  
  
“How many more?” he asks, and two of the little ones on his left arm hold up three fingers each.  
  
“Six?” They shake their heads and both point at each other’s hands. “Oh, so three”. The pair nod and Keith begins to circle back the way he came, scanning for even the smallest thing he could have missed. He returns to Kolivan without a single new find, face now twisted in concern. They’re supposed to know not to run off out of sight of both their parents, at least not until they’re ready to fully leave the nest.  
  
“Have you seen them?” he asks with a wrinkle in his brow, and Kolivan shakes his head with a smile.  
  
“They’re certainly within range, but as for being able to see them at the moment, I can’t.” Leva lets out a little bubble of glee from her father’s shoulder.  
  
“So that means you both know exactly where they’re hiding, but neither of you is going to tell me,” he sighs. “Great, can I at least get a sense of hot and cold?”  
  
He begins to swim around the small clearing, occasionally glancing at Kolivan every so often for hints. The octopi gives no such thing, merely smiling at Keith as he continues to overturn every stone and sand dune he can lay his hands on as Leva giggles at him. It grows maddening, Leva prodding Kolivan’s neck and pointing gleefully at Keith’s continued failure, whispering in her father’s ear. He’s about to admit defeat, tell them all he gives in, when he notices the way Kolivan sits.  
  
For all the time they’d spent together these past few months, Keith would have been an idiot if he hadn’t picked up on Kolivan’s quirks. If resting for long periods the octopi liked to settle down, his many legs crossed over each other into almost a nest of sorts, one Keith hates to admit he enjoys settling down into at the end of a long day to feel the weight of one of those arms draped over him. Right now though, Kolivan doesn’t sit like this. He’s between upright and laying down, almost as if he’s attempting to stay at attention despite sleep weighing down his bones. Almost as if there’s a reason he can’t sit…  
  
Keith dives at Kolivan’s legs before the other can protest, several of his little hitchhikers tumbling from him at the sudden lunge. His head wedges between two and he begins to wiggle further between them, despite Kolivan’s protests. One tries to wrap around his waist but Keith takes the opportunity to tug his arms in as well and work to wedge his shoulders through the gap. He’s finally trapped halfway under Kolivan’s skirt of tentacles, no less than three wrapped around his tail and torso as he hangs onto one of the rear ones to avoid being yanked out.  
  
Three little faces stare owlishly up at him from the small patch of sand in the centre of Kolivan’s arms, illuminated with streaks of sunlight. At the appearance of Keith they shriek, trying to scrabble for a final attempt at cover before he scoops them all up in and arm and shoos them out from under Kolivan, commending them but also reminding them there won’t always be their father around to hide under. He’s about to follow after them, pull back out of Kolivan’s tentacles, when the other squeezes him tighter, one of his suckers brushing over Keith’s slit.  
  
The result is instantaneous, Keith has to hold back his voice to avoid the children hearing. He can hear Kolivan’s voice above him, almost rumbling through him as he playfully chides him.  
  
“Swimming between someone’s legs without asking, that’s quite rude, don’t you think?” There’s a chorus of ‘ _mm-hmm’_ s and ‘ _yes papa_ ’s from nearby, as if Kolivan had been asking them and not Keith. He grips onto the tentacles in his hands tighter, trying to hold his composure enough. _This isn’t the time to beg Kolivan to fuck him._  
  
It feels like it’s been ages since the last time, even though its only been a few weeks. Before the kids had been born Kolivan had been in intimate contact with him, many arms wrapped around and in Keith at any hour of the day as he milked any stress from Keith’s bones any way he saw fit. Since then… Keith let out a shaky breath as Kolivan’s arms twisted around him, trying to tug him free. Since then… he’d hardly had a moment like that in days, the closest thing being sleeping together with their brood, one of his heavy arms laid over Keith’s middle. He tried looking around the underbelly of them all, searching for Kolivan’s breeding tentacle, but to no avail. He was yanked out, held upside-down and face to face with his kids, and that was that.  
  
“You have anything to say for yourself?”  
  
Keith felt blood rush to his face, and not simply because of his current position. “I’m sorry Kolivan,” he says, sarcasm and honey dripping from every word. “I should know better than to do that to someone.”  
  
His mate nods, seemingly pleased, and frees Keith from his grip. He’s painfully aware that there’s no lingering touch, no teasing swipe down his backside as he slips from Kolivan’s arms. He half-heartedly rights himself with one last stolen glance at Kolivan’s arms, and begins collecting the little ones for their trip back home.  
  
That night, lying in the hold with Kolivan and kids, he thinks back. Kolivan really hasn’t gone beyond platonic touch since they’d been born. There’d been hugs, yes, and he’d been carried around when he was too tired to move, but other than that, Kolivan hadn’t even given Keith a look beyond one of a parent sharing in their chores. His interest in Keith seems to have stopped at a successful breeding.  
  
It’s not like he misses it, Keith tells himself, even as he pulls in closer against Kolivan. It’s not like he misses those strong arms rubbing up and down his body, feeling every last inch of him they can reach. He hadn’t really loved the feeling of being the centre of Kolivan’s focus or the way he’d tease Keith’s insides until he was begging for release. It was just a honeymoon brain, making the best of where he found himself. That’s what he kept telling himself, even as he drifted off to sleep, trying to pull Kolivan’s arm further around him. 

* * *

In another two weeks nearly all the kids are gone. They trickle away slowly, one by one growing restless, wanting to spend less and less time with their parents and siblings and more and more try and sneak out of the breach in the hull. The first time it happens Keith catches them and pulls them back inside, ready to chide them for being to reckless, only to be stopped by Kolivan.  
  
Instead what transpires is a talk, Kolivan carefully asking their wiry haired son the ins and outs of the ocean, how to hunt (they’d been slowly teaching them ever since beginning to take them outside), how to find shelter, everything. At the end of it he simply nods, and that’s it, all the blessing he needs and their first child leaves. Soon after more and more take the same path, showing they’re ready to leave the nest before giving one final goodbye.  
  
It’s… strange. Keith remembers his sisters leaving far earlier than him, but he stayed with his mother for some time, raised well beyond the stage his own children were at now until she was certain he could survive safely on his own. Octopi clearly don’t have the same issues as seahorses, and for that he’s grateful for them. Still… part of him will miss waking up to excited voices and little bodies dragging him to see the latest craft they’d build of scrap and driftwood. He never thought he’d feel this way, but as Leva departs, the last of their brood, he’s left with a strange hollow feeling inside, one wondering how long until the next time he’ll see them again or care for a new set of fresh faces.  
  
As her form fades out into the blue of the ocean Kolivan turns to him. It’s the first time in forever that it’s just been the two of them. Keith’s breath catches in his chest as he strides closer.  
  
“Well, it’s done. What will you do?”  
  
Keith blinks in confusion. “What will I do?”  
  
“Yes. Now that the children are gone there’s no reason for you to remain here.”  
  
He’s not sure he’s heard right. The way Kolivan’s talking, it as if he’s a tool, now used and useless to him. The way he’s spoken those many months ago had had him convinced Kolivan’s mind would be set on keeping him, regardless of what Keith wanted himself, treated like another treasure stashed here in his wreck.  
  
“Don’t you want another brood? More babies?”  
  
The muscle in Kolivan’s jaw tenses. “I’m out of eggs. You’ve depleted me of all I had for the season. There will be no more until next year.”  
  
“So?”  
  
“So I see little point in keeping you here. You seemed quite fixated on leaving at the beginning of all this, I figured I should allow you the opportunity to leave should you wish.”  
  
It’s true. He’d hated the idea of it at first, caught and kept for the one use the ocean saw him for, locked away in Kolivan’s lair too filled to swim away. But it hadn’t been all bad, it had hardly been at all. He’d been cared for after all, looked after with a softer touch than those rippling arms had first suggested.  
  
Arms that even now, stayed at Kolivan’s sides, unmoving, unreaching towards Keith.  
  
It hits him with a pang realizing it. How little he’s been touched by Kolivan since their brood came into being. Even that one time, trussed up in his tentacles so like the many times they’d rolled together in the sandy bottom, had been under his own initiative. He missed it, Kolivan stringing him up, taking away his power and doing as he wished with him, both pleasuring him and pushing him to his limits. Every time he’d thought he was at a breaking point Kolivan pushed him further, sending him crashing even further over his edge only to wake later wrapped in those same arms that took such joy toying with him.  
  
Or had.  
  
Without eggs Kolivan had no use for him, no need to keep and tend to a weaker through the winter months. The illusion of choice now was no doubt his attempt at manners to cover up a choice he’d already made. It was foolish to think the look now on Kolivan’s face was one of pain instead of one hoping for the easy route.  
  
But really… did he want to stay? Kolivan had his moments of kindness, but he could find another, a female of his kind, one who’d return his attentions with interest, who’d dance around him every day of his carrying, barely leave his side until their brood was born. There were many fish in the sea.  
  
“So I guess this is it then,” he says, drawing himself up, trying to hide the way his breath betrays him as it catches in his chest. “I’ll be going then.”  
  
Kolivan nods sombrely. There’s little else to say. With their transaction of parenthood complete, nothing remains. Keith takes one last look around the wreck that’s become his home these past several months. He’ll miss the loose panes of stained glass, the shelves of human artifacts and the way it’s old beams creak in the tides. This could be the last time he ever sees the inside of it.  
  
“Goodbye… I guess.” The words seem wrong, unfitting after months of being so close to the other, but Keith can’t find the strength to say anything else. He bobs out of the entrance, into the open ocean, and takes one last look back.  
  
Kolivan watches him from the gap in the hull, one hand gripping the loose planking, his face unreadable. Keith’s about to turn away, never look back, when the silence breaks.  
  
“You can come back, you know… visit.” Kolivan looks almost surprised as Keith at the words that have just left his mouth, the lighter patches on his cheeks deepening. Its enough for hope to flutter in Keith’s chest, despite the doubts nagging in his gut. “If you’d like of course. I won’t stop you either way.”  
  
Keith nods, traces of a smile trying to crack through his bittersweet facade.  
  
“I might take you up on that one day.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith's adjusting to life alone again. He's got his home back in order, he's even meeting a few new faces, but here's hoping he doesn't get wrapped up in things too fast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Start of the more iffy chapters. Without too many spoilers this one contains enthusiastic, then revoked consent.

Keith’s days pass in a haze. He wanders aimlessly through the sea, just aware enough to keep himself out of sight from any unsavoury looking shadows in the distance and trap his meals. He feels childish beyond belief feeling this way, letting feelings cloud his existence like silt clouds crystal waters. He tells himself it’s silly, that he’s better off, but words always take longer to sink in than action.  
  
There’s an awful lot of actions in his memory that have yet to fade away.  
  
In a small blessing his home had gone undiscovered for all these months, a testament to how well he’d picked it all those years ago. It’s nothing fancy (it’s _nothing_ compared to Kolivan’s home, a thought he constantly has to push from his mind), but it’s cozy enough. He’d taken his time in shaping it, carefully carving at shale and coral, harvesting kelp and weed until he’d covered the rocks at the entrance with a garden of real and false anemones, the live ones harmless but the fakes carefully crafted to look like the most painful of stingers. It was more than enough to keep other menfolk away, the only creatures willing to try swimming into his cave the occasional small family of crabs or guppies.  
  
Some of the ledges are now covered in sand and some of his knickknacks fallen to the cave floor and adopted by the odd hermit crab, but otherwise it’s the same as how he’d left it. It’s nice in a way, an easy distraction from thinking about the kids and Kolivan. He takes his time cleaning it, going on long trips to hunt down decorations and supplies far further than he needs to go just to extend the task.  
In the end, the cleaning still barely lasts longer than a week or two.  
  
Nights are perhaps the worst. He’s so used  to being with others as he sleeps, feel their hold and warmth wrapped around him. It’s what keeps him up at night, what makes him miss those last few months so much.  
  
Keith had never taken himself as a needy person. He’d always seen himself as independent, happier without others, _flourishing_ own his own. Now he realizes its not that simple. The peace is welcome of course, but sometimes the silence is deafening. There’s no one at arm’s reach to share stories or talk about something as simple as the patterns of sunlight flashing through the surface. The initial ache at their goodbye faded away days ago, shrunken to the smallest of hollows inside himself. There’s a lasting change in himself, he knows it, but admitting to it is two strokes over the depths too far. Still, he can’t help but catch himself doing things he’d never have done before.  
  
Maybe that’s why he finds himself swimming closer to Kolivan’s lair more and more with every passing week.  
  
He’s too proud to return outright, instead swimming through the nearby fields of weed and turrets of rock. If they meet it’s a chance encounter, or so he tells himself as he eyes the shadow of Kolivan’s wreck in the distance. Despite the open invitation to visit, now still feels too soon, as if his sudden appearance will broadcast his feelings for leagues in all directions.  
  
Not that they’re strong.  
  
Or there at all.  
  
He’s fine.  
  
Totally fine.  
  
It’s on one of these days that Keith finds himself in the kelp fields yet again with the excuse of gathering urchins for his garden. He’s resolute now in avoiding a visit to Kolivan until near spring, where the casual suggestion of some mutual stress relief and maybe another course of breeding will be difficult for Kolivan to refuse. Both of them know how valuable Keith is. Kolivan would be foolish to turn down his offer to house his eggs again.  
  
He smiles to himself as he plucks a black urchin from the footing of a kelp frond. It’s just a few months away. It won’t be hard to keep riding this out until he can propose the idea. He can already picture how Kolivan would react, golden eyes open wide, ear fins perked high as the other merman fought to keep his many arms to his sides and off Keith’s skin.  
  
One of the many kelp leaves brushes over his back and Keith would be lying if he didn’t admit to leaning into the touch. In fact… he swims closer to the plant, spine rubbing against the stalk as the many fronds curl and slide over his body. It’s not quite the same, but _god_ does it feel good. Keith leans further into it, letting the long slimy strips wrap around his wrists and brush his hips. He closes his eyes and loses himself in the sensation. It’s so easy to pretend, imagine that texture on his skin is someone else, someone slowly wrapping him in their chaotic embrace. Before he can stop himself a moan escapes his lips.  
  
“Well, _that_ ’s certainly a sight one doesn’t see everyday.”  
  
Keith’s eyes snap open to the sight of another merman opposite him, amused sneer across their pale lips. A translucent cap covers the top of their head, many thin spindles cascading over their shoulders like rain in a great flowing cage that holds their fan of white hair and sleek physique. Keith’s eyes wander lower. A milky skirt of frilled limbs taper down from their waist.  
  
A jellyfish, he realizes, body frozen stiff where he’d been sighted. His gaze sweeps over them again several times, looking for signs of friend or foe. It finally settles on the jelly’s middle, where  a slight swell of pearly shapes are just visible beneath their skin.  
  
_Another carrier_ , he breathes in relief, sinking back against the kelp. He doesn’t have to worry about this one trying to jump him, he’s safe to talk. Still, that doesn’t mean he has to be polite.  
  
“What do you want,” he snaps, more than a little annoyed at being caught in the middle of something he’d rather no one see.  
  
“What do any of us want?” the other replies in a melodious tone that’s half soothing, half infuriating with how smooth it is. “Safety, conversation… companionship?”  
  
“Seems to me you’ve already got that,” Keith says with a nod at the other’s middle.  
  
The jelly’s lips pull taught for a second before their easy smile returns. “Now that I’ve run into you, yes. As for these…” he waves a hand at the cloudy shapes inside him, just discernible through his misty abdomen. “Unfortunate stowaways for the meantime, but you no doubt know how it is.”  
  
Keith’s nodding before he can stop himself. “I’ve got some idea, yeah.” He’s not about to admit to anyone, least of all another breeder that part of him misses that heavy feeling of life inside him. Spring can’t come soon enough.  
  
“I’m Lotor by the way,” the merman says, swimming closer to Keith in a pulse of his cap. “I couldn’t help but notice you seemed to be, how should I say it… _enamoured_ with the vegetation.”  
  
“Keith,” he clips, backing further into the kelp as Lotor comes to float a hands reach away from him. “And I wasn’t in love with it… just… enjoying it a little.” Some colour floods his cheeks at the admission.  
  
“No shame in that, I’m one to talk after all,” Lotor shrugs, tendrils bouncing gracefully off the rise of his shoulders. “After all, how do you think I ended up as I am. Sometimes you need a little something more. A bit of… fun, shall we say?”  
  
One of his tentacles brushes over Keith’s tail and his breath leaves him before he can catch it. It’s nothing like Kolivan, none of the bulk of the strength there in that wisp of an arm, but _that feeling._ Every scale it runs over feels electrified, nerves set alight at every sensation that touches it. The drag of it over him sends him crashing back, right into the thick of mating, body being touched and handled to climax. His inner walls give a flutter at the very thought of it.  
“I…” he tries, but his tongue is thick, leaden as Lotor cocks his head quizzically and another two run against his fin and hand.  
  
“I what?” Lotor asks, but it’s obvious he knows what he’s doing. The jellyfish mer is so close Keith can feel how the currents flow around him as more and more of his tentacles dance over his skin. Every time they touch him he feels another jolt up his spine.  
  
“You… what…” he tries again, but it’s growing hard to focus on anything besides how Lotor’s limbs are making him feel.  
  
“Oh, are you wondering about these?” Lotor asks with a little chuckle, taking several in hand and running them through his fingers right before Keith’s eyes. “Just my lappets. I’m told they feel quite nice, of course I don’t feel anything myself from them.” The same hand drops to the curve of Keith’s hips, running over the plush sides. “Smaller organisms tend to be stunned or trapped, but with larger ones, well… I think you have some idea of what the effect feels like.”  
  
Keith just nods mutely. He can only focus on one thing at a time with these things rubbing up against him and that's processing whatever Lotor’s saying.  
  
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you almost _enjoyed_ the feeling of them.” Keith watches as Lotor looks at him through those pale eyelashes. “There’s not many fish I’ve met that like the feeling of getting tangled up, but it seems that you…”  
  
“I’ve… had experiences…” Keith gulps. _Don't think of Kolivan, don’t think of Kolivan, don’t think of his tentacles o-_  
  
“Oh my…” Lotor’s eyes fly wide in lazy (perhaps mock) surprise. “Well that’s quite rare. Do you enjoy that feeling? Being wrapped up, at another’s mercy?”  
  
A smile curls on his lips as Keith simmers in silence, the redness of his cheeks and ears speaking treacherously loud for him. “Well then, you’d take no offence in joining me for a little fun now, would you?”  
  
He might be turned on now, embarrassingly turned on, but Keith’s no idiot. He pulls back, just out of reach of everything save for Lotor’s closest tentacles.  
  
“What exactly are you getting at?”  
  
“Nothing really,” Lotor shrugs. “A little mutual pleasure, helping each other out. You know how these things work.” He pats his stomach with a knowing look at Keith. “Looking after the young ones can be a challenge.”  
  
Right. Fertilization. Depending on the… attention span of a partner a breeder could be either brought to climax and seed the eggs, or left hanging as soon as the other finished. Not that he’d been one left hanging in his experiences. Seemed as though Lotor hadn’t been as lucky with his partner.  
  
“I’m… I’m not that good,” he says stupidly, but of course he isn’t, where would he have ever had to look after another breeder. The continued excuses are there and ready on his tongue, but Lotor is already silencing him, one of those long, frosted fingers pressing against his lips.  
  
“Shhh, it’s quite alright. We all start somewhere, I’ll simply take first turn, show you how it’s done. It’s the least I can do with you helping me with these little problems here.”  
  
The tendrils are back, cloaking Keith’s entire body as Lotor closes the gap between them. His lips come to Keith’s ear, nibbling along the thin, sensitive skin, something softer than teeth nipping at the curve of where it meets his jaw but no less enjoyable. Keith gives himself in easily, sinking into Lotor’s hold and winding his arms around the others shoulders. Lotor’s hair feels amazing in his fingers, so sleek and fluid as it runs through them he’s grasping and combing at the other’s neck in encouragement before he even fully realizes it.  
  
He’s being pulled closer now, Lotor’s body practically oozing around his as his tail is wrapped in the other’s frills. It’s so familiar and foreign, that feeling of being held against another, unable to swim away. Lotor’s limbs are strong, but bulkless, more like warm sea grass or ferns than cords of muscle. However, for what they lack in raw power they more than make up for. Everywhere they touch a warm tingle spreads through him, soaking into his sinews and bones. He feels it all, every ripple of the frills around his hips and front, every inch of those tendrils that bumps against his skin. A moan escapes him before he can stop himself.  
  
“Enjoying ourselves, are we?” Lotor smiles into his neck, fingers snaking lower to wrap around the curve of his waist and pull him closer. “I can do more you know…”  
  
“Please…” Keith hisses, and Lotor does so with a hearty chuckle.  
  
Immediately the thin tentacles that have been dancing around him the the currents snap to attention. Keith finds them winding around his arms, lacing behind his shoulders and curving back around to his navel. In short order he’s strung up, caught in Lotor’s web, arms trapped against the curve of his spine. He’s left like that, at Lotor’s mercy as the other merman continues to rub his hands further over Keith’s body. Everywhere his fingers dance over after those tendrils feels fuzzy with sensation, as if Lotor’s massaging an echo of that strange electric sensation deeper into Keith’s flesh. He gives into it readily, listing backwards, spine arched as he presents himself.  
  
“You’re so sensitive,” Lotor marvels, his fingers needing deep circles into Keith’s hips and driving him buck forwards into Lotor’s many ribbons. “The closer I touch to here-” he rubs his thumb up and down Keith’s hipbone and a sob breaks from Keith, “-the more you react. It’s like you’re desperate for this. As if you waited just for me.”  
  
_“Please,_ ” Keith gasps, as a finger just dances beside his entrance. He can feel one of those electric tentacles brushing up alongside it, skirting around where he _knows_ it’s meant to be inside him.  
  
“Please what?” Lotor’s voice is gruff, one of his hands knotted in Keith’s hair and tugging his head to the side. His neck is open, defenceless where Lotor holds it. “You have to be more specific. It’s _all_ about communication my dear. After all, how else would I know how to make you feel good?”

  
“Please…” Keith tries again, but this time it’s not lack of will keeping him from completing his thought, but the feeling of Lotor’s tongue dragging up his neck. Hot and heavy, sending those same jolts through his body as his arms. Keith’s amazed he hasn’t already come from this feeling already. “Please… in there… I need you to touch me in there.”  
  
If his words still aren’t precise enough Lotor doesn’t seem to care. Keith’s continued rocking against his hips seems to get the message across and those blessed fingers are now prodding at his hole with interest, spreading his folds and inspecting the first few gleaming inches of his passage.  
  
“So pretty,” Lotor coos, and Keith lets out a groan of relief as a finger sinks inside him, driving down to the knuckle before hooking and beginning to tease his insides. “Warm too, and soft… You must make for a fabulous breeder.”  
  
Keith just nods as Lotor adds a second inside him. He knows how good he is, how healthy his clutches will be, how fast his body can accommodate his changing size. Kolivan has told him as much, countless times. Praising him as Keith fucked himself on Kolivan’s arms until he’s loose and open, only to hold him still, watching as that desperate channel tightened back up before his very own eyes. He’s always tight, its how he has to be to keep his eggs inside, but the way his body can give, how it can stretch around things…  
  
“Add more.”  
  
Lotor’s fingers pause for a second.  
  
“Add your tentacles,” Keith hisses. “I want to feel them, want that feeling inside my cunt.”  
  
The grin that spreads over Lotor’s face sends fresh shivers up Keith’s spine. He’s being handled harder now, Lotor’s thin tentacles tugging him arms further down his back, one wrapping loosely around his neck to continue teasing the same spot Lotor’s mouth had just a few seconds ago.  
  
“I need to see this,” Lotor says, hands and mouth making their way down Keith’s body as yet more tentacles dance and rub against his body. Two come to Keith’s nipples and _tug_ , practically knotting around them and Keith screams as his vision blurs and body sings. It feels so wrong and yet so right, strung up like this at Lotor’s mercy, every inch of his body tortured wondrously by Lotor’s stingers. He can feel several of them dance around his entrance as Lotor’s nose comes level with his navel, and in one fluid movement they thrust inside.  
  
Keith’s entire being is set alight. He can feel every inch of his cunt aflame, that same wondrous stinging in his ams and chest spreading through his walls as they delve deeper, pushed in by Lotor’s eager fingers. At the first brush of one against his inner gate he comes, blind with pleasure as tremors wrack his body. And still they probe him, two more coming to his cervix and toying with it, drawing out his orgasm as he twitches in Lotor’s hold.  
  
Dully he’s aware of Lotor’s mouth, how his lips trace down from Keith’s stomach to his hole, suckling at the flesh even as his fingers spread Keith wide. As something thicker joins the tentacles in Keith’s cunt his body tenses up and lets out in orgasm again. Lotor’s tongue has joined the fray, pressing deep into Keith’s cunt and working the tentacles right against Keith’s nerves. He’s lost. There’s nothing else in this moment, nothing in the entire open but himself and Lotor and this feeling. He never wants it to end, he’ll stay like this forever, letting Lotor milk orgasm after orgasm out of him until he’s given all he can give and his channel is flowing with slick.  
  
How long he stays in this haze Keith has no idea. Minutes, hours, days, he doesn’t care. Lotor’s limbs just to continue to tease him until Keith’s body is an inch from giving out, the only thing keeping him afloat Lotor’s hold on himself. He’s lost count of how much he’s come, how much pleasure is coursing through his veins.  
  
Keith barely registers it as Lotor’s tongue seems to push even deeper into him. Somewhere behind the buzz of pleasure in his ears he can hear the other groaning, as if in the throes of ecstasy himself. Lotor’s nose is buried in the crown of his slit, chin rocking into Keith’s hips as his fingers hold I'm so tight Keith swears he’ll be bruised for days.  
  
He doesn’t realize there’s something awry until that first telltale push at the gate to his womb, strong, insistent, and then all at once it’s pushing its way through. His entire being is so loose, the effects of Lotor’s stingers so potent he can hardly manage to squeeze a noise of distress from his lungs.  
  
“Lotor… what….”  
  
_“Sshhhh,_ ” the other says. His voice is muffled, as if something occupies his throat. He rocks Keith’s hips further onto his face and with a lurch Keith feels something plop inside him. Already he feels something else prodding at the gate again, his cunt no less filled than before. The movement in his cunt and in his womb are entirely different from before, totally separate entities.  
  
_Something definitely not a tongue._  
  
_“Lotor…”_ he warns, even as panic starts to creep in. “Lotor, Lotor let go!”  
  
He tries to wriggle free even as another something plops inside him, but it’s no use. He could have been swimming in sand his body’s so useless, his struggles against Lotor’s bonds are as feeble as a newborn’s.  
  
His voice is crawling higher now, Keith’s fighting desperately to keep that telltale squeak of horror from it. “Lotor, _what’s going on?”_  
  
The other merman draws back and Keith knows, _he knows_ what’s inside him now isn’t a part of Lotor. Even now, with the jellyfish smirking up at him he can feel a third thing try to work it’s way inside himself as a fourth follows closely at it’s heels.  
  
“You agreed now, didn’t you?” Lotor purrs. “Said you’d help me out with the little ones, and such a generous offer. I thought I’d have to spit the little wretches out someplace horrid, and then there you were, practically begging for a clutch.”  
  
Tears are prickling in Keith’s eyes in fear as he feels the third slip fully inside himself and the fourth begins to do the same. “What… what do you mean?”  
  
“I mean,” Lotor says, laying another kiss to Keith’s cunt, and the seahorse jerks back as he feels another _thing_ start to crawl inside him. “I mean that carrying is a degrading task for someone like me. That my young should be in someone else, or not exist at all.”  
  
Keith’s eyes go wide as something silver pokes through the rim of Lotor’s lips and the other leans forward to deliver the creature to Keith’s defenceless passage.  
  
“What are those,” he gasps. “Why are they… why are you putting them here.” Lotor buries his nose in Keith’s folds again and his stomach lurches as three more leave Lotor’s mouth and begin their way inside him.  
  
“Polups, my little breeder. Leave them free on the ocean floor and it can take months, _years_ for them to gestate fully. But here…” Lotor runs a hand over Keith’s stomach and with a jolt he sees the curve starting to form around them. “Here they’ll mature… multiply. Your womb will be the root of a gorgeous bloom, your body will be filled with them.”  
  
“St-stop!” Keith croaks as yet more wriggle their way inside him and he pictures the dozen silver grubs settling inside himself. “I didn’t… I didn’t tell you you could do this!”  
  
“On the contrary Keith, you were more than happy to help me with my little problem with my young. You were begging to have this ravenous hole filled.” He jams a finger in beside the last of them, harsh and prodding as it drives his tentacles into Keith’s bundle of nerves. He comes despite himself, the feeling too much to ignore, and with a desperate sob he feels his body take the last of them in.  
  
“Just look at that, so hungry it swallowed them all up like that.” His tentacles are retreating now, Lotor’s hands carefully tucking Keith’s folds back into place as he untangles himself from the now debautched seahorse filled with life. “Look after them now, will you? You have no idea what an honour it is to carry my spawn.”  
  
“Lotor,” Keith hisses, but his body is too loose to move. Lotor’s stings have built up over their time, his muscles too slack to do much more than the slowest of motions. He sinks onto the seafloor below before he can even raise a hand above his hips.  
  
“Now now, don’t be too upset,”Lotor chimes. His face is smug as he rearranges himself. “I did give you your best fuck in… lord, what must it have been? Months? Perhaps ever. Don’t go saying there was nothing in this for you.”  
  
“How dare you…”  
  
Lotor pauses, lips pursed. “Now Keith, I didn't do anything anyone else wouldn't. Count yourself lucky, you could have run into far worse fish in the sea who couldn't care less if you enjoyed yourself or not. I saw, I asked, I took my opportunity. It's not my fault you're lower on the breeding chain than me. There are brutes higher than either of us." His nose wrinkles at that. "I'm simply looking out for number one, same as the rest of us. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He gives an experimental stroke and smiles at his now flat stomach, “I really must be going now.”  
  
Before Keith can do anything, raise a fist to beat him, cuss him out to the whole ocean Lotor is gone as fast as he came. Keith is left alone, traitorous body still loose and humming with the aftereffects of pleasure. Deep inside, Lotor’s stowaways continue to shift inside himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jellyfish reproduction is... well, a wild ride. Certain species carry eggs in their stomachs, others just let them out into the wilds of the ocean, and then there's the whole polyp deal where literally ONE POLYP can sprout a ton of mature jellies when the right conditions hit (and that's why we can get these crazy ass jellyfish blooms happening.
> 
> Chapter 3's gonna hit the full on non-con dead dove, because honestly? Sendak's a huge dick


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo... Sendak's a dick? Sendak's a dick.   
> Glad we're on a similar page.

Keith had barely regained full feeling in his limbs. After his… encounter with that jellyfish he’d spent far too long on the ground, waiting impatiently for whatever toxin Lotor had filled him with to pass through his system. Ever so often he could feel the polyps inside him move, reminding him even more of how stupid he’d been. Leaving himself so open to a breeding, looking back now… _fuck._ He was an idiot. His mom had told him, _multiple times,_ about cuttlefish types hiding tentacles to look like unthreatening females until they were close enough to grapple a hold and do as they wished. Lotor had more or less done the same  
  
“Look at yourself now…” Keith mumbled to himself, the tingling in his limbs finally low enough to sit up. _Spend one breeding season with someone and now you’re lonely enough you’ll let the first friendly merperson you meet go and fuck you senseless._ He was nowhere near as full as he’d been with Kolivan’s clutch, but this one… it had gone sour the minute Lotor had decided to take advantage of him. As soon as he made his way home he’d figure out some method of getting them out of him. It definitely didn’t seem as if Lotor was going to come back and check if he was still looking after them. He definitely didn’t seem to have any parental attachment to them. He just had to wait it out a little longer and-  
  
“Well well well, it looks like it’s my lucky day.”  
  
Keith whips his head around, the speed and toxin still in his system enough to make his stomach lurch where he sits. It straight up plummets at the sight in front of him.   
  
A lionfish.  
  
The merman is huge, hulking. His frame alone is enough to make Keith shrink into himself, but that’s not even half of his silhouette. Great billowing fins bloom from his arms and back, tail flukes spread wide as they twitch in amusement. Spines sprout from his shoulders and hips, even more smaller ones from his cheeks and ears. Everything about him screams predator, like a great dark shadow ready to swoop down and devour him.   
  
“You… you’ve got that wrong.” Keith fights to keep the warble from his voice. Maybe if he plays this right, acts unafraid, he can get this brute to leave him alone. “I’ve got a mate already.”  
  
The other merman’s eyebrows raise at that. Without their cover, Keith notes one is a sickening bloodshot red, as if someone had tried to scrape it clean from his skull. When he speaks its a gruff, taunting growl.  
  
“I don’t see anyone here protecting your honour, whelp.”  
  
“They don’t need to.” Keith curls up further as the other swims even closer.  
  
“I find that hard to believe, a pretty little thing like you out here… defenceless…”   
  
Out of nowhere a jet of water is shot straight at Keith, barrelling into his shoulder and knocking him off balance. He flails, trying to regain his position, but lands flat on his back, belly up.  
  
It’s impossible to miss the perverse grin that forms on the others face.   
  
_“Very pretty._ Makes me think that this mate of yours is even more naive than you, leaving something so valuable out where someone else can take it.” He palms his groin, and Keith’s stomach leaves his body entirely. He’s got some definite feeling in his extremities now, but he knows he’s still too weak to make the mad dash he needs.  
  
“You’re too late!” Keith spits. “I’m already bred.” A palm comes to sit on the small swell of his stomach, even if the shifting of the jellyfish young inside is enough to make his nausea return in full. It feels wrong compared to the eggs he carried for months. Even when they’d hatched they’d at least felt somewhat like their sire. These… these were alien. But still, they were his last trump card. “I’m already carrying, so there’s no point of even trying. Nothing more’s going to fit.”  
  
Every fibre of him is drawn bowstring tight. This has to work, _it has to._   
  
“Is that so?” The merman swims right up to him, so close that his fins begin to blot out patches of daylight filtering through the waters. One of his clawed hands makes for a grab at Keith’s middle and he’s forced to hop backwards away from it’s clutches.   
  
“You see little breeder,” he chuffs, “I’ve had _plenty_ of experience with all species of carriers. I’ve seen what they can hold, and what they can’t…”  
  
Keith’s steadily back-pedalling now, one hand after another tugging sand between his fingers as he retreats from the advancing merman, that same wicked smile on his face growing progressively sharper with each fistful he grabs.   
  
“For instance, I’ve seen a whale carry triplets, or a shark packed to the gills with pups. Why, I’ve even seen a flatworm taken by a dozen of her brothers, ganged up on and filled to near bursting. That’s not even coming to mention my various conquests.”  
  
There has to be something nearby, a nook, a sharp rock… _anything_ Keith can use to get himself away from this creep.   
  
“And of course, I’ve heard stories about ones like you. How man after man can fuck you full and still you’re begging to be bred. It’s what you crave. You’re made to hold eggs and nothing more. As soon as you spit out one clutch out you’re already begging for another. Your body isn’t satisfied until you’re so swollen you can’t even swim.”  
  
Keith feels his back press up against something hard. He’s been pushed back into a corner, his field of vision blocked of everything except the merman’s veil of fins. Right in front of him he can see the head of the merman’s erection peeking out of his genital slit, red spines crowing the head and shining with lust. The merman lets out a lustful moan.  
  
“It’s how you are… and it’s what I’m going to make you. _My little breeding bitch.”_  
  
Keith’s lunging for the only place he can: at the villain himself. He hopes it’s enough to startle him, enough to stall his massive form long enough for him to slip past. After that he doesn’t know what he’ll do. That’s what he’ll figure out as the last of his tail slips free of the man’s frill-like fins.   
  
He never gets to that step.   
  
There’s a sharp pain in his sides as the other’s nails pierce into his skin to hold him, air knocked from his lungs with the strength behind that arm. Those same claws spin him around, pressing him face to face with the triumphant sneer of the lionfish.  
  
“All bred up you said?” he sneers, rubbing Keith’s stomach against his chest. “I can hardly feel anything in there. I bet your womb would swallow my entire cock if it could, that’s how weak your little _mate_ is. Barely even three eggs in you, won’t they be surprised when they see you after this.”  
  
 _No. No, he **can’t.**_ Keith’s heart is pounding in his chest so hard it could break free at any moment. He can’t do this. Keith’d already been bred this season, _twice_ , once willingly and once… a horrible error of judgement. He wasn’t about to carry more, not for another male who was going to pump and dump him the second his cock ran dry. He can’t deal with that. He has to get away.  
  
“Oh, feisty aren’t we?” The lionfish crushes Keith harder in his hands, the pain like needles in his skin, jabbing right down to the core and leaving crushing bruises around his hips. Despite that Keith keeps wriggling, kicking, _anything_ to get away from this man. His ugly mug twists into an equally ugly frown. “Can’t have you being this spirited if its not to fuck yourself on me. Consider this your final warning, whelp.”  
  
“Warning of what?” Keith spits. He’s rewarded with a sudden shockwave of water spat back at him and making his ears ring.  
  
“Last call,” he growls. Keith feels sharp spines graze up his belly, the head of the merman’s monstrous cock scraping his navel. “This is your last chance to get on this dick at your own free will.”  
  
Despite the hairs on his neck raising, his body screaming to go limp and play dead, Keith fights on. “What makes you think I’d ever want to bred with you? Maybe I’d rather die than have that ugly thing touching me!”  
  
The lion fish’s eyes go dark. One of his hands shoots up to grab Keith’s neck.  
  
“That can be arranged little breeder. _That can be arranged.”_  
  
Keith’s head is forcibly tugged down, his body pressed even harder into the quill-field of the stranger’s hips.  
  
“You see these?” the merman asks. “If you’d just been a good little egg slut you could have avoided them, but now you need to pay. You’re getting on my cock one way or another.”  
  
Tears explode from the corners of Keith’s eyes as the merman thrusts his spines into his flesh. He can feel every last millimetre that stabs into him, burning like a thousand tiny, white hot knives. They burrow in around his navel, his hip bones, right around the contour of his groin, stabbing their venom into his system. It hurts even more when he’s ripped from them, fresh welts forming, but still it feels like those needles are digging deeper into him, stabbing him straight through his guts. Keith has to fight the urge to gag.  
  
The merman smiles, a horrible, monstrous grin.   
  
“You feel that now?” he laughs. “That’s a special poison, just for smug little carriers like you. Just one spine is enough to have you retching in pain. But this many…” he flashes his teeth at Keith, each one sharper than the last. “You’ll probably be dead within the hour.”  
  
“You—“ Keith tries, but the words are knocked from his throat as a searing pain rips through his entire abdomen. _Oh god… he’s not joking… he feels like he might actually die from this…_  
  
“There is one cure… but you’re not going to like it.”  
  
Keith’s almost doubled over in his arms, or at least as far as he can held like this. It’s like a thousand urchins are inside him, jabbing into his soft walls, trying to rip their way out of him. It takes almost everything he has in him to force his vision to focus on the disgusting predator in front of him.   
  
“What…” he wheezes, “… is it?”  
  
“I breed you fat with my young.”  
  
Keith’s eyes fly wide just as another gut-shredding wave of pain shoots through him. _“What?”_  
  
“You heard me. The only way for this pain to go away is to take my brood.”  
  
“You’re… you’re joking…” _Oh god… everything’s going blurry…_ he was on the verge of passing out now.   
  
His chin is wrenched to meet the other’s leering stare.  
  
“The choice is yours whelp. Breed or die.”   
  
There’s no mercy in his eyes. Only the cruel glimmer of a dirty triumph lingers in them. Even as the idea makes Keith’s stomach churn with pain even more, he knows he’s lost. The only way out of this is death. His body goes limp. His jaw is set.   
  
_“Good…. good little bitch._ Tell me you want it. Tell me ‘Sendak, fuck me with your glorious cock’. Say you want me to breed you up like the little slut that you are.”  
  
Keith swears that if he’s ever reborn, if he’s ever given half the chance, he’s going to make Sendak pay. Acid washes up the back of his throat as he fights through the pain and nausea.   
  
“Fuck me Sendak.” At the questioning look the monster gives him Keith bites his tongue. “Make…” he gags, “…make me your bitch.”  
  
Without warning he’s impaled on Sendak’s cock.  
  
The air is forced from his lungs, shoved aside to make room for the enormous, throbbing member now burying itself in his slit. He can feel every last spine on it’s disgusting head burying themselves deeper in his body, feel Sendak’s many spines dance dangerously along the underside of his belly. He prays that he isn’t about to be stabbed again, fed even more toxin to the point of no recovery.   
  
He lets out a hiccup as Sendak bottoms out inside him, fat head jabbing hard against his unyielding cervix. It’s almost as if it knows how little he wants this, Sendak inside him. He just hopes this is quick. That it even works.   
  
“Don’t worry little pretty,” Sendak coos. “I’m going to enjoy this immensely. No doubt you will too.”  
  
The lionfish sets a brutal pace, clawed hands jerking Keith’s hips on and off his cock like a well-used fuck sleeve. Every time he pulls out Keith feels those spines grate along his insides, jabbing at his nerves and catching on his rim. He’ll pull Keith off until his cock nearly falls out, then ram it back inside, battering the back of Keith’s passage and making the contents of his belly jolt.   
  
Despite the abuse on his insides Keith feels the pain in his abdomen begin to… fade? It’s hard to pick up on at first, everything hurts so much. At the start he can barely keep his eyes open between the cramps and the terrifying face before him, but now, as he feels the bruises building in his cunt, the stabbing in his gut begins to fade. It’s slow, torturous, but as Sendak manhandles him on his cock he becomes more and more able to focus on other things. He tries to think of something worlds away from this, happy things, peaceful things. Arranging rocks and weeds into intricate gardens and camouflage… watching starlight twinkle through the dark at night… how rain looks from beneath the waves… Kolivan carrying him, their young in his own arms…  
  
The memory of it catches in Keith’s throat.   
  
He’d do anything to be there now.   
  
But he’s here, trapped in a monster’s arms, forced to bear his children. He wants to go back, rewind all these months he’d let himself disappear from Kolivan’s life and force the octopus to confess his true feelings to him. It’d be so much better… knowing where they stood, what both of them felt. At least he’d have been able to move past it, accept it was never going to be again.   
  
He doesn’t realize how hard he’s crying until Sendak spews a fresh burst of water in his face, knocking him back into harsh reality with ringing ears.   
  
“Crying now are we? Thinking about how your ‘ _mate_ ’ would look at you now, seeing you be bred by a proper partner?” He laughs as he pounds deep into Keith’s cunt, the seahorse’s cervix finally beginning to yield an inch against his onslaught. “They barely had the stuff to fill you. They’re worthless compared to me.”  
  
“No…” Keith whines, “no… he’s not… he’s different. Better.”  
  
“Better because they can barely put a child in your belly? I doubt that.” Sendak smashes inside again, swollen head grinding against the entrance to Keith’s womb, trying to get it to yield.  
  
“No. He didn’t… these aren’t his!”  
  
“A slut in denial then aren’t you? Going around pretending someone else’s spawn are his… very promiscuous aren't you. So what’s a few more bastards in your belly. _Open. Up._ ” Each word is punctuated with another hip shattering thrust.   
  
“I didn’t want them anymore than I want you! Some jellyfish tricked me! How the hell was I supposed to know there are carriers that transplant their own?!”  
  
Sendak’s motions slow. “Jellyfish you said? Cocky little thing, long white hair?”  
  
“Y-yes… why?” This sudden questioning has Keith on edge, but he’ll do anything to give his tired body a break from Sendak’s assaults, even if the lion fish continues to rock deep inside his pussy.   
  
“That little bitch…” A mirthless laugh escapes the brute. “Even after I fuck him into his rightful place below me he still has the gall to think he deserves the title of stud. As if a carrier could ever be given such a responsibility. I’ll have to find him again, his mouth did look so pretty wrapped around my cock.”  
  
The pain in Keith’s gut in gone, replaced with icy numbness. “You… you bred Lotor?”  
  
“Bred him?” Sendak roars. “I _dominated_ him. I fucked that shit eating grin off his face, reminded him of his place in the sea, made him rue the day he first thought he could do anything other than bend over for those better than him. Or at least,” he quiets, “I thought I had. Seems as though I need to remind him who’s the true stud in these waters.”  
  
There’s a sharp stab of pain inside Keith. Sendak’s breeched his insides, head of his cock fully embedded in Keith’s womb.   
  
“The next time he sees you, remind him that this is how a true man fucks his bitch.”  
  
Keith screams as the first egg deposits itself inside him. It’s huge, bigger than Lotor’s young, bigger that Kolivan’s eggs even. As it emerges from the tip of his cock he can feel the lower spines dig into his body, jabbing at his flesh, several dozen extra reminders to his body this is the last thing from pleasure. And then there’s another. And another. He looses track almost as fast as they started, they all blend together into a constant tide of pain and relief. His middle begins to stretch, swelling with the contents Sendak continues to pack in. There’s no going back now, he’s trapped with them inside him, steadily filling him out as Sendak groans and rides out the length of his orgasm.   
  
There has to be at least a dozen in him by the time Sendak is finished with him, carelessly ripping his cock from Keith’s slit and tossing him to the ground while it’s still dripping with traces of slick the likes of which Keith can only assume were his body’s way of protecting itself from further pain. He’s too full, painfully so now, Lotor’s young squirming erratically as they try to free themselves from being buried in Sendak’s clutch.   
  
The other merman barely casts him a second glance as he tucks himself away, straightening his fins after a well-enjoyed fuck.   
  
“I could take you with me, but I rather like the idea of you being found by someone else. Getting bred up again, having them struggle to add their brood to mine…” he shoots Keith a wicked grin. “Yes… I think that’s the perfect fate for you. After all, it’s what you were born for.”  
  
Keith can’t even raise a fist to shake at Sendak as he swims off. He lies there, hands grabbing his distended middle, hoping to Poseidon he can find his way out of here before that can happen. He can’t survive another breeding, not like that one. But he’s so weighed down now, weakened by poison and electricity that he can barely move. Just trying to lift himself to a stationary float is exhausting he can barely maintain it before sinking back to the ground.  
  
It’s okay… he’ll figure this out… he can get them out somehow. They’re not fertilized, Sendak made sure there wasn’t an ounce of Keith’s body that enjoyed the process, he can take his time with that. Maybe with enough stretching… Keith tries to reach a hand inside himself, but can’t get his fingers more than a few knuckles deep before the mass of his stomach gets in the way.   
  
He… he can get more flexible… learn to bend enough to get his hand deep enough to take them out… it’ll be alright. It’ll be…  
  
Keith chokes back a sob. It’s not okay. He’s _ruined_. There’s no hope for him like this. It’s only a matter of time before someone else finds him lying out in the open and uses him for their own agenda. There’s no way he’ll be able to crawl all the way back to his nest without someone spotting him and _then what_? He still has Sendak’s eggs stuck inside him. Without help he has no hope of getting them out.   
  
He curls into a ball, hugging the few expanses of his chest that haven’t been changed by Sendak and Lotor. This is his life now, how he’s going to live until he dies.   
  
He barely even stirs when a shadow slips over him, doesn’t even lift his head until he’s being turned around in large hands, sees the wave of extra legs in the corners of his vision, hears the gasp as the other sees his face.  
  
“Kolivan?” His voice comes out as a croak.   
  
But it’s not. Instead of those peaked ears and heavy brows the other’s face is concealed in a hood, nothing but their mouth visible to Keith.   
  
“Antok?”  
  
The other merman nods mutely. Even without a line of sight to his eyes Keith sees the shock on his face.   
  
“Please… get Kolivan. Antok…. you have to.”  
  
The squid looks him over once more, gaze stopping at the size of Keith’s middle. He points at the obvious.   
  
“I know… He’s the only one who can- …who I trust to get them out. Please, _hurry.”_  
  
Antok nods and before Keith can say another word he’s disappeared in a flash of tentacles.   
  
He’ll be okay… he’ll be safe.   
  
Even if Kolivan doesn’t want to anything to do with him he wouldn’t turn down a request like this right? He was better than that, less shallow, more accepting. He was _kind_.   
  
Keith lies there, rubbing his sore stomach and growing more nervous by the minute.   
  
_How long does it take to swim to Kolivan’s from here?_  
  
 _Shouldn’t they be back by now?_  
  
 _What if Antok just up and left him here?_  
  
Thoughts like these and more continue to swirl through Keith’s mind as he stares at the surface above his head, rays of sunlight filtering through as if this was as bright and cheerful a day as any. When a silhouette breaks his line of sight he sits up, Kolivan’s name on his lips.   
  
_Not Kolivan._   
  
A mershark is approaching him now, one long stripe of hair wrapping back along the middle of his skull. Keith curls in on himself, protecting his middle as much as he protects his access to it. This isn’t happening. Not a third time.   
  
There’s a howl of rage and the shark is flung onto the seafloor, arms and tail no match for the mass of legs restraining them. Keith’s breath leaves him as he spots the familiar markings on their shoulders.   
  
_Kolivan._  
  
Sufficiently warned off the shark swims away, tail between his fins, and for the first time in months Keith sees his mate’s face. Kolivan’s usual stern look is gone, replaced with one of distraught as he bounds to Keith’s side and lifts the small merman into his arms.   
  
“Keith…. I… I…”  
  
He shakes his head, one exhausted finger pressed against Kolivan lips to silence him. Time doesn’t seem to have been kind to Kolivan. Some of the luster in his hair is gone, several lines in his face have grown deeper. His lips are pressed together to the point of bone-white, and with a start Keith realizes he’s holding back from losing control in front of him. The way he’s slung in the other’s arms is perfect, long practiced and committed to wrote. Despite the circumstances, despite everything that’s wrong right now, he can’t help but smile back into Kolivan’s distraught eyes.  
  
“I knew I should have stayed.”  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End of the angst and non-con for this work. Get ready for some recovery and comfort in the final chapter, I know I need it. (does anyone else get stressed out writing angst/bad ends? I sure do) Took some liberties with lionfish breeding, but you know Sendak is the type to get off on seeing someone else in pain...


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time for some well, well deserved comfort at last. If you're rejoining us after ch.1 and skipped the middle two: Sendak's the biggest creep in the sea, Lotor's a few more shades of grey, and it's about damn time Keith gets some rest.

Somehow he’s back in Kolivan’s ship, how they made it there he has no idea. From the moment the other merman cradled him in his arms the rest of the ocean had faded out of existence. As soon as the adrenaline had left him so had the last traces of his energy. Keith had simply curled against Kolivan’s chest, one ear pressing to the other’s pounding heart, and let the sound soothe him to a place far, far away from where he’d been.   
  
Apparently Antok was there now. He still couldn’t hear much at all that the squid merman said, his voice far too low to comprehend, but Kolivan was definitely talking to someone, even as his fingers and arms stroked Keith’s head and limbs.   
  
“It was that nurse shark, wasn’t it? What’s his name… Uron? Ulat?”  
  
Some noise comes from Antok.   
  
“ _Ulaz_ … _right_. I _can’t_ ….” Keith feels Kolivan’s chest press closer against him as he sucks in a breath. “I’m going to _kill_ him. I’d heard he’d had trouble finding mates, but _this? **This**_? I’ll make him regret every egg he put in him, every last finger that touched him, I—“  
  
“…Kolivan?”   
  
The octopi’s tirade stalls instantly at Keith’s interjection. His eyes are locked down on the small merman in his arms, still pressed as close against Kolivan as he possibly could. Close enough that he could convince himself this wasn’t a fevered dream while he lay abandoned on the ocean floor. It had to be. He couldn’t be imagining every last start and stop of Kolivan’s heart, or the way his hair tickled Keith’s brow. There was too much… so much he hadn’t even realized he’d missed these past few months.   
  
“Keith…” His voice takes on softer tone, all the ice and bitters gone. The swell in Keith’s treacherous heart at the very shift of it is enough to know how far gone he is. “You’re awake… what is it?”  
  
“He… the mershark… Ulaz, he didn’t do it.”  
  
Kolivan waivers. “He didn’t? But he—”  
  
“No,” Keith shakes his head. “He spotted me after Antok went to go find you. I don’t… I don’t know if he— he…”  
  
The thought brings back a fresh wave of nausea, so strong that for a second he’s terrified that Sendak’s poison is continuing to kill him. He seizes up, the image swimming before his eyes, Sendak’s body with another murky face, claw-like hands digging into his hips…  
  
“Keith… are you alright? _Keith_!” Kolivan is shifting him in his arms, tucking Keith’s face into his shoulder, large hand petting the nape of his neck. “It’s okay… they’re gone. Nothing’s going to happen now. I’ve got you.”  
  
How long he holds Keith like that he’s not sure. As long as he needs for his pulse to calm and his muscles to relax bit by bit. It could be minutes or hours, everything blends together into one moment strung up in time. Kolivan lets Keith’s fingers dig into his back, his many arms support and guide Keith’s unwieldily bulk as he tries to press himself closer. He doesn’t even care that Antok is there watching this. Everything else is an afterthought, tossed away as soon as it comes to mind. The only constant is Kolivan, his warmth, his safety, and his embrace. Why he ended up leaving it he doesn’t know.   
  
“Kolivan?” Keith’s voice is a whisper, his breath barely enough to make the smallest hairs on the other’s head dance, even as close as he is. He exists in the moment in a bubble made of Kolivan’s presence. Anything that can break out beyond that feels wrong. There’s a hum in return, and Keith know’s he’s listening to every word.   
  
“Please… take them out.”  
  
Kolivan stills, Keith hugged even closer to him. “Are you sure?”  
  
He nods, chin bumping Kolivan’s neck where it sits. “I don’t… I didn’t want them. Any of them. It feels wrong. They’re…” he swallows, “they don’t feel like yours.”  
  
If he couldn’t feel the beating of Kolivan’s heart against his own he would have believed the other had turned to stone. There’s no movement, not even in his tentacles. Keith is held there, hung in Kolivan’s arms, his face tucked away from Kolivan’s. What was he thinking? Fear? Regret? Happiness? He tries to wriggle in Kolivan’s grasp, get a read on him, but as soon as he moves the spell is broken, Kolivan brought back to life, guiding Keith in front of him and his stoic face, just as unreadable as always. Or… almost unreadable.  
  
“Are you sure you’re up for it? You don’t… what I mean…” Kolivan was floundering, _actually floundering_ for words right now. “Keith… you look awful right now.”  
  
He hadn’t even had time to notice the state of his body in the hurricane of bad luck he’d just been plowed over with, but the furrows in Kolivan’s brow made him look, really look at himself.   
  
_Oh god._ It was bad.   
  
Everywhere that Lotor’s tentacles had gripped him looked chafed red, even if a finger run over them felt nothing of the sort, only a residual tingle from the last of the electrotoxin. They were webbed up and down his arms and chest, and Keith knew instantly that the same had to be for his neck as well. His nipples were red and puffed, worse than a seacow nursing her babes. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to know how they’d feel if something rubbed against them now. And his waist… _fuck_. His swollen middle was marred with scratches and marks from Sendak’s assault. He could see the places where the spines had stabbed him, pink welts rising from the dome they sat on, final wisps of red diffusing in the waters.   
  
He looked like he’d been dragged through a mile of urchins and razor wire. Seeing it set the exhaustion deeper into his bones. He’d been completely ruined. There was no way he should be asking for this after what he’d been through, his insides no doubt looked the same if not worse than the outside. Still… the idea of Lotor’s… things inside him, or worse, Sendak’s eggs bearing fruit…  
  
“I don’t want them to have the chance to settle. Kolivan, _please…_ ” Keith croaks. “I need them out. The longer they’re in me, the more he wins.” Sendak’s ugly mug swims before his eyes. He’d already let enough of himself be violated by that disgusting creature. He couldn’t let him win anymore than he already had. The idea of one of those eggs making it even close to term…  
  
“I’ll get them out, with or without your help. Even if it kills me, I’ll… I’ll—“  
  
“Keith…”   
  
A warm weight wraps around his body, letting his tired spine sink against it’s cushioned form, gently seating Keith in Kolivan’s front tentacles. Kolivan’s hand comes to rest on his hip, covering the marks left on them. One of his thumbs traces along the curve of his hipbones, his lips twisted in something Keith can’t quite read as the pad carefully avoids the red marks.   
  
“I’ll do it. I don’t want to put you through anything more than you already have.” He continues to rub slow circles into Keith’s sides, and despite the aching everywhere in his body Keith lets out a little groan of pleasure. “But if this is what you need right now, who am I to say no.” It feels so nice, Kolivan touching him like this. It’s not like when he would hold Keith for breedings, but there’s the same tender gestures as when he’d held Kolivan’s clutch. Almost too gentle for someone of Kolivan’s size.   
  
“Antok, would you mind finding some bladderwrack? He’s going to need something to soothe these burns on his arms.”  
  
 _Right. They’re not alone._ Keith’s face goes scarlet as he locks eyes with the other merman where he’s leaning against the torn entrance of the old galleon. Antok’s entire hood rises as he looks at Keith, as if to say “really? You weren’t just going to let me watch?” He lets out a huff, arms crossed in what may be mock protest before sitting back up and leaving the way he’d came.   
  
“Cheeky fucker,” Kolivan snorts, before turning his attention back to Keith. “There’s a fair likelihood this might hurt you further, I have no idea who did this to you.”  
  
“There were two of them.” Kolivan’s eyebrows skyrocket at that and Keith presses on. If he keeps it sterile, descriptions brief, he won’t end up picturing it again. “Not at the same time. One was a jellyfish, I thought they were another carrier. They were…” his nose wrinkles, “interesting at first.”  
  
“That explains these.” Kolivan traces beside the spiderwebs of marks wrapping around Keith’s hips towards his entrance. “But what made you think that? Was it—”  
  
“No, it wasn’t some cuttlefish trick,” Keith hissed, hands clenching onto Kolivan’s tentacles as the other slowly parted his folds. _Fuck it was sore down there_. “They looked pregnant, like you could actually see some of the eggs through them. He even talked like he was. Like he was looking for someone to help him fertilize them. Asked if I wanted to help and then said he’d teach me how to do it.”  
  
“Sounds charming,” Kolivan grumbled. The octopi’s face was screwed up in concentration, hands helping to hold Keith’s belly up out of his line of sight. One of his smallest tentacles was easing it’s way in now, trying its hardest not to butt against Keith’s walls. He wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t. His body still felt like Sendak’s cock had carved a tunnel out of him, all those spines scraping and forcing him to open up or suffer more pain. What did surprise him though, was when Kolivan had eased it halfway in. All of a sudden, Keith felt the cool press of a dozen suckers against his walls.   
  
He let out a moan before he could help it. _Kolivan felt so good._ Everywhere those little pads touched felt like a cool balm being applied to his insides. Each one ghosted over his passage like the softest set of lips, kissing and pampering his sore muscles. Keith found himself sinking lower in the other’s many arms, trying to open himself up even more to Kolivan in the hopes that that feeling spread to the rest of him. He was working slowly, like a timid eel exploring a cave for the first time. Keith had to bite back a choke of ‘ _more_ ’ despite everything. He didn’t trust his voice enough right now to sound anything other than desperate. There was no way he should feel like that right now, not when he was beat up and abused near his limits, but being in Kolivan’s arms, being touched the way he was right now, it made almost all of that strain out of his mind.   
  
When Kolivan pauses for a break, tentacle withdrawing despite Keith’s protests and two fingers replacing it, Keith’s shocked to feel none of the pain from before. The rawness of his insides seems to be gone as Kolivan slowly works his fingers in, rubbing their way up and down the expanse where his limb had just been. It’s not numb per say…. he can still feel the pressure of those fingertips running up and down his channel, but the full sensation feels masked somehow.   
  
There’s a nod of approval as Kolivan retracts his fingers, and on the way one of his knuckles catches on the other side of Keith’s entrance. Pain flares up immediately, hot and angry. He twists in Kolivan’s arms, a string of curses leaving him before he thinks better.  
  
 _“Fuck! Holy crapsack that hurts!_   Why is that part so—” he gasps.  
  
“I haven’t cleaned you there yet,” Kolivan shushes, one hand raising to brush back the hairs  catching Keith’s face. “There’s still stingers in you, not to mention, well…” his face darkens.   
  
“Well what?” Keith asks. Kolivan bites his lip and starts to work his small arm back inside silently, all the while avoiding Keith’s glares.  
  
“Scratch marks Keith. Some of them are deeper than others.” His suckers get to work on another part of the seahorse’s hole. He seems about to say something, but thinks better of it, trading words for silence yet again. “Thank gods its not any worse than what it is.”  
  
Keith simply nods in agreement, falling into the same wordlessness.   
  
There’s something still off about this all, despite the gentleness of Kolivan’s touch, the ease at which they slot together now. As Kolivan continues to work Keith takes his time to study the other. He hadn’t been wrong, something in Kolivan’s appearance had changed over the passing months. While no less intimidating at first glance there was something else there, a tiredness almost. Even his locks, usually fanning out behind him in a great cloud —or, on occasion, twisted back into a great snaking braid — felt flatter, as if weighed down. There were no other signs of sickness, no loss of muscle Keith could see. He was simply… less lively.  
  
“So,” Keith tries, knowing full well how stupid he sounds, “how have you been?”  
  
“Fine,” Kolivan shrugs, “business as usual more or less.”  
  
That wry smile Keith had grown so accustomed to looks weeks gone now. Something tells Keith it likely hasn’t been there for some time, and not just a product of this moment. He leans forwards as Kolivan works a finger in alongside his tentacle, testing the efficacy of his numbing secretion. Were those… bags under his eyes? Kolivan had never looked tired when Keith had known him, not even with half a dozen toddlers hanging off him every night. He pulled himself closer, so close, until they were nearly nose to nose.   
  
“Keith, I need to see what I’m—”  
  
“What are you thinking right now?”  
  
The question stalls all motions from Kolivan. “I’m focused on helping you here, I’m not thinking—”  
  
“That’s not what I mean,” Keith says, and he fights to ignore the fluttering in his stomach, stowaway or nerves. “I mean what’s running through your head right now, what’s been running through it for some time now I bet, because I can _tell_ Kolivan. I can tell. You don’t look like yourself, and maybe Antok can’t see it, or he isn’t saying something, but god dammit I’m going to because seeing you right now is making me think about a lot of things too.”  
  
“… Like… Like what?” Kolivan’s ear fins droop a fraction lower, and Keith has the gall to hope it’s with wistful emotion. He bites his lip though, caught in a confession he had no plan to give until he backed himself into a corner like this.   
  
“Like… I don’t know…” he stutters. “Like maybe I should have stopped by and visited once or twice… or… I don’t know, got you to talk to me more.”  
  
The waters in front of his face warm and Keith lets out a little squeak as Kolivan’s face comes with a hair’s breath of his own.  
  
“Is there anything else?”  
  
“M-maybe?” Keith’s well aware of how hot he’s growing, there’s no chance Kolivan isn’t going to notice it soon, not with Keith so entangled in his arms. “It depends… depends on why you sent me away.”  
  
The warmth before his face recedes as Kolivan pulls back, lips tucked tightly against one another. “I thought I made myself clear… that I was giving you the choice to leave.”  
  
“But that doesn’t make any sense!” Keith snaps. “The first thing you tell me is how you plan to keep me like one of your little treasures forever and ever and then… then…” he trails of, fighting down the sting of tears. “Then you go and throw me out as soon as you were done with me.” Kolivan hadn’t been like Sendak, or even Lotor, there’d been none of that breed and dump he’d been readied for since he was young, but… he’d been left alone all the same.  
  
“That was how it felt to you?”  
  
Keith’s about to snap back, use words as biting as a shark’s teeth to make Kolivan understand a fraction of what he’d gone through, how hard it had been to forget these past few months. What he doesn’t expect, and what makes his words falter is Kolivan’s face.   
  
Eyes wide, lips parted, Keith could practically see the cogs turning in his brain, watching as his face turned from one of confusion into one of shock. One hand crept from Kolivan’s side to his face, hiding it once again from Keith’s reading. He could hear words behind it, just out of reach of his ears, and before Kolivan could do anything he ripped it away.   
  
“I… I’d thought you would want to leave. You seemed set on it for weeks since the first day, I thought it was only natural you’d want to go after our agreement was over.” He spoke as if to a ghost, as if Keith wasn’t really in his arms, like he didn’t have an arm stuffed in Keith’s channel. “I stopped assuming I could simply keep you, not if it meant you were unhappy. I…”  
  
Keith’s heart was racing so hard he swore it might leave him for good. _There was no way… no way that all this time Kolivan felt **that way** and didn’t say anything._ But… those times they’d spent just the two of them, the first time Kolivan had joked about what their children would look like, the way the corners of his mouth turned that meant he cared about it more than he let on. There was no way Kolivan would have let him go, let both of them suffer if that was the case. He couldn’t… or could he?  
  
His throat felt too dry, but even so Keith forced the question out of himself.  
  
“Did you love me?”  
  
It hung there like an anchor dangled between the two of them, rooting them both to the spot in fear it may crash down on them a second later. Something, anything, that was all Keith asked for. A shred of proof that he hadn’t been crazy all those months, that what he’d felt was real.   
  
One of Kolivan’s tentacles wound its way around Keith’s fingers. Another wrapped protectively around his back. “I cared about you more than I wanted to admit.”  
  
 _Holy crap._ Kolivan’s ear fins were flat with abashment, somehow making the hulking octopi look cute of all things. He wasn’t sure his heart could take this. I wasn’t built to stand this type of thing.   
  
“And now?”  
  
“Now?” Kolivan blinked, roused out of some inner thought.   
  
“Now… do you still feel like that?”  
  
“Do you?”  
  
“Me?” Keith’s taken off guard by that. “What do you mean? Can’t you tell already?”  
  
“Can’t you?”  
  
“Can’t I what?”  
“Can you not tell that I’ve regretted letting you go since they day I did?”  
  
If he wasn’t wrapped up in Kolivan’s arms right now Keith would have dropped to the floor in shock.   
  
“You… all this time? You didn’t want that?”  
  
“No,” Kolivan breathes, pulling Keith against his chest. Against Keith’s cheek he can feel the pounding of Kolivan’s heart. It’s faster than he’s ever felt it, faster than in sex, faster than in anger, even faster than when he’d found Keith in the sorry state he’s in. All of Kolivan is tight, trembling as he cards his hands through Keith’s locks. “I wanted to keep you forever as mine, protect you until the day I die. You’re that precious… I…” he tries yet again. “I… love is a strong word… and yet…”  
  
“… it fits.” Keith nods into Kolivan’s heart. “Feeling this way, there’s really only word for it, isn’t there?”  
  
“Yes,” Kolivan echoes, and draws Keith up to his chest. “I suppose that’s the only one that fits. I love you.”  
  
Keith’s heart is overflowing, it’s too much his eyes are starting to water. After all this time… after all the mixed messages, all the time spent alone, he’s back. _Back forever_ , safe with Kolivan. Kolivan’s forever, and Kolivan is his.   
  
“I love you too,” he croaks. “I wish I’d realized it sooner.”  
  
“I wish I had too. If I’d noticed this never would have happened.” Kolivan squeezes him against his breast so tight Keith feels as if they may fuse together in the moment. “I’m so sorry Keith. I should have done better. I’ll never forgive myself for this.” His tentacle wriggles morosely inside Keith, a sheepish reminder of the position they’re in.   
  
“It’s not your fault,” Keith bites back, “it’s mi—”  
  
A deep growl cuts him off. “Don’t you dare say that. You were violated. That’s no fault of your own.” Kolivan’s arm wriggles deeper inside him, starting to rub against his inner barrier. “How dare they… touching what’s mine.”  
  
The words spark through Keith like lightning. _Kolivan’s. He’s Kolivan’s_ , _and no one else’s_. He can feel flutters of pleasure deep in his gut, the very thought of it, being with him season after season, a mate strong and fast enough he never has to worry about another laying a hand on him. One so attentive, so raw and virile he’ll never have to worry about a painful breeding again, let alone ever going unbred if he chooses. A shudder runs up against his spine at the idea, stoked by Kolivan’s circling of his cervix.   
  
“Something has you enjoying yourself,” Kolivan purrs, and that teasing is music to Keith’s ears. He leans into Kolivan’s touch, trying to stoke the flames more…  
  
“No, wait!” Keith sits back up, pulling off Kolivan’s tentacle and away from that edge. His mate gives him an uneasy look.   
“You can’t be that… good Kolivan. I haven’t, uh… come yet,” he stutters, brushing hair from his face. “They’re not fertilized, and I’d rather them stay that way than let Sendak get the sa—”  
  
 _“What?”_  
  
Keith blinks. “Not fertilized?”  
  
Kolivan’s eyes have turned steely, glinting dangerously. “No, the name. What did you just say?”  
  
“Sendak? He… he…” Keith pulls in his lips, fighting to stay in the present and out of that past.   
  
“That _monstrosity_ laid his filthy claws on you?” Kolivan’s voice is taking on a knife-like edge, eyes cutting into the curve of Keith’s belly. _“He_ bred _you_? With that poison of his too,” he growls at the marks that still mar Keith’s sides. “How _dare he? I’m going to… I’m going_ …”  
  
Keith gasps as Kolivan’s tentacle thrusts forward, punching directly into his womb and jerking him back against Kolivan’s legs. He can feel it root around inside himself, all gentle pretexts gone, aggressively curling and scooping at the eggs that fill him. He’s grateful Kolivan numbed his passage, the only feeling is in the gate to his womb, stoked back and forth by Kolivan’s suckers as he twists and grabs.   
  
There’s a pop and Keith feels something squeeze through his cervix, flexing it even further open and something hard tumbles into his cunt, now rolling back and forth as Kolivan continues to root around with single minded focus. It’s joined by another, then another, bumping around until a second tentacle is at his entrance, this one pushing in more delicately than the first, but as soon as it catches hold it rips the offending egg out, throwing it to the ground with such force Keith can hear it crack on impact, and then it’s delving back in to extract another.   
  
He feels the jerk of Kolivan’s arm as it touches something else moving inside him, the octopi’s eyes flying wide in shock.   
  
“Lotor’s…. the jellyfish,” Keith groans around another egg being pulled from his cunt. “Whatever they are they’re not in eggs anymore.”  
  
Kolivan grumbles as he tries to grab the slippery creature. “Just when you think you had everyone figured out one more invertebrate needs to come along…”   
  
The polyp puts up a fight as Kolivan pulls it through Keith’s sphincter, wriggling against the muscle in an attempt to make it back inside. Kolivan chucks it out an open porthole without so much as a second glance.   
  
“It doesn’t even need a place like this, why he did it anyway… lord knows.”  
  
After the first polyp Kolivan makes quick work of the rest, catching and tossing them with increasing looks of disgust. Keith’s stomach is beginning to deflate, he can see over it now at where Kolivan penetrates him, watch as his arms pumps in and out. The second emerges with a  sickly greyish orb and joins it’s brethren on the ship’s flooring. Some are damaged, others look unharmed.   
  
“What are you going to do with them?” A part of him doesn’t want to think about what might become of them. There was still a chance, no matter how slim, that one of them had been seeded. It made him more nauseous than even Sendak’s poison.   
  
There’s a dark smile on Kolivan’s face. “I’m going to find him, and make him watch. Watch as I feed every last one of these to a grouper along with his last hopes of ever so much as _looking_ at you again without answering for his sins. I’ll show him what happens when someone touches you against your will.”   
  
A gasp breaks from Keith’s lips as the tentacle inside him curls inside his cervix, stretching it to the point he swears he’ll break. But he doesn’t. Kolivan strokes his middle with those soothing tentacles, the aches and pains of his wounds fading into the background as the eggs are massaged out of him from the outside. There's only four more, then three… and with a final squeeze around his waist Keith feels the final two slip out into his channel before tumbling from his slit to join their brethren.   
  
He’s immediately pulled into Kolivan’s arms, large hands running up and down his spine as Kolivan carries him to the other side of the wreck. Keith feels worn out, bone tired. It’s so easy to start to drift off in the safety of Kolivan’s hold. Nothing will happen to him here, he’s safe, protected by someone far more powerful than his would be aggressors.   
  
“I apologize,” Kolivan says as he begins to fold his legs into a nest, “for being so rough right then. It was not my intention to hurt you.”  
  
“S’okay,” Keith mumbles into his breast, “I wanted them gone too.”  
  
“Still… in your condition I should have restrained myself more. I’d have hated if I’d hurt you.”  
  
A lazy hum is Keith’s reply. He’s too cozy now. He’s spent months starved of touch like this, receiving so much at once is nearly overwhelming.  
  
“Just keep holding me,” he says at last. “Stay with me, and let me stay with you. Talk to me when you’re worried, listen when I am. Be… this.” He nuzzles closer, leaving a chaste kiss on Kolivan’s neck.  
  
There’s the brush of something against his temple, before Keith feels the butt of Kolivan’s chin trace down the line of his nose. His own is tilted up, until he’s gazing at the octopi before him, and the gap between them closes.   
  
Of everything he’s known of Kolivan, this catches him completely unaware. Kolivan’s lips are tender, soft with the hint of rough edges. Not powerful, but firm in their presence, as if reaffirming his commitment to Keith. As if it’s his unspoken promise for the two of them.   
  
“I love you,” he whispers.  
  
Keith could cry at any moment. He’s been through six circles of hell, chewed up and spit out half a dozen times over the past several weeks. But somehow he’d survive it all again, if only to capture this sliver of time. So perfect, so needed, he can feel his aches and pains begin to fade with the future those words hold.  
  
“I love you too.”  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew. Okay. I promise that is my last foray into pain and angst for this AU for a damn long time. Keith and Kolivan are a true couple now, and there's no signs Shiro and Ulaz are going to be breaking up any time soon either. Speaking of, next installment in this will be getting back to those two, and then eventually everyone's going to get to meet everyone :3c
> 
> Just a heads up I've got a major deadline for school this month, so probably won't have much time at all for writing before July. In the meantime though, I'm DEFINTELY not opposed to any suggestions as to what you might be interested in coming next. If it fits in with the general timeline I have in my head for this I'll see if it makes its way in

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. So the low down for this work is the middle chapters weave through consent to dub-con to revoked consent. You are by no means required to read it if you don't want to.
> 
> If you are interested in seeing the further development of Keith and Kolivan as a couple I am writing this so that chapters 1 and 4 can be read alone and you can easily fill in the blanks to a tamer version of events without having to read or take the middle two chapters as your preferred canon of events in this universe. Alternatively you can join the rest of us back up at the next work in this installment, and skip the details of the ups and downs of Keith's relationships.
> 
> For those of you on the fence or hoping for a preview of what's to come, I've got two words for you: Jellyfish prince.


End file.
